


definitive gaze

by dissembler



Category: This House - Graham
Genre: Frottage, M/M, Mutual Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:08:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24720568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dissembler/pseuds/dissembler
Summary: Walter's in the archives thinking, Jack comes to check on him.
Relationships: Bernard 'Jack' Weatherill/Walter Harrison
Comments: 5
Kudos: 14





	definitive gaze

**Author's Note:**

> I, a filthy southerner, apologise wholeheartedly both to Yorkshiremen in general and to my family in Yorkshire for this attempt at an accent.
> 
> I will never apologise to posh bastards.
> 
> This is set somewhere between pairing being back on and the no confidence vote.

Not allowed to smoke in the Parliamentary archive. It’s understandable, what with all this combustible material. The whole legal history of the bloody country going up in smoke would be more than Walter’s life’s worth, but still his fingers itch to light up. He’d go out to the river, but it’s a dull day and raining, and he doesn’t fancy to get wet. He doesn’t fancy to get talked to, either. 

But all that’s accentuating the negative, and in this line of work it doesn’t do to dwell. So better to say that he’s down here, in the dark, with all this bloody vellum, because – what? Because he likes the smell? Nah: he is, he’s hiding. And even he, dark arts and all, can’t do owt to make hiding come out good. Just as well no-one else comes down here to see it.

Just at that bastard thought, the overhead light turns back on and the click-clack of well-heeled posh bastard shoes behind reminds him that someone else does know about this place.

Weatherill clears his throat. “You had noticed that you were in the dark, hadn’t you?’

“I had indeed, Jack. But thank you for illuminating me.” 

Walter drums on the desk at the punchline and Jack smiles at the crap joke, then goes to lean, all the long, languorous lines of him, against the desk opposite Walter’s perch. You pick up quick in positions of power here that it’s often better to sit on desks than at them, easier to dash away at a moment’s notice, and you usually get a height advantage. Jack leaning, bent ever so slightly at the waist, and Walter sitting brings them basically of a height.

“I’d heard that there was some opera floating from the government whips office,” says Jack, cheeky, and Walter laughs.

“‘Aye,” he admits, happy to slip into the usual back and forth. “They’re very vocal about their problems,” _very_ vocal, and Walter’s Italian only really stretches to orders at the _ristorante_ but he can grasp the basics, “them operatics. Would never last in the House, what with all that caterwauling over the smallest trouble. Sergeant and speaker both would have a fit.”

Jack raises an elegant eyebrow. “Oh, I quite disagree. Bless their hearts, the members, but they do want to make themselves heard at the slightest issue. _Speaker_ and _sergeant_ both, I’d imagine, might even be happy about it, were the shouting to turn to music.”

“I know for a fact that most of this lot can’t carry a tune, Jack, so ‘music’ is generous. We’d all be bleeding from the ears more than we usually are if they started singing.”

Jack smiles at the floor, puts his compensatory portfolio down next to him at a neat angle. Then he looks up, all sudden like, his eyes snapping to Walter’s with an intensity that Walter isn’t sure he likes. 

“May I ask why you’re down here alone?” His tone’s that sort of light but not really light that all the whips use from time to time, the one that says you don’t have to answer but you absolutely do have to answer at the same time. Walter doesn’t overly like having it turned on him.

He tries to fob Jack off with, “‘We all need–”, but he isn’t having it.

“–Somewhere to go,’” Jack finishes. “Yes, I know that. But all the same, I hadn’t noticed anything today that would send you back to your warren hole.”

“Well, that’s good, then. Shows your spying isn’t up to much.”

The answering sigh is long-suffering, but Jack still looks concerned as he says, “I don’t suppose that you want to talk about it.”

“And you suppose correctly. Look, Jack, thanks for the concern but it’s nowt. Just sommat I get from time to time.”

Jack doesn’t leave, he just says, “Oh yes?” all gentle like and Walter wonders if this is a skill Jack picked up in his shop because God knows when Atkins does it, looks at you and waits for you to talk, it’s bloody condescending. On Jack, though, it works. He’s got something soft about the eyes and while it can’t pull party secrets from Walter, it can damned well pull personal ones out. 

“I just don’t bloody understand Tories, sometimes, you know?”

Jack huffs out a surprised laugh, as if he’d thought it might be something earth-shattering rather than mundane existentialism. Silly, really. Both of them know full well that while the real worries make you act, it’s the little niggles that make you hide.

“Oh Christ,” says Jack, “I _know_. I hardly ever understand your lot.” His smile widens, skin about his eyes crinkling. “Though that may just be the accents.”

Walter rolls his eyes heavenward. “Ha bloody ha,” he says, and Jack smiles, pleased at his own joke. Walter feels that small hum of affection he gets when he and Jack get the chance to talk in a low-pressure moment – rarer now, four and a bit years in. Ever since they both turned deputy they’ve had it: simple fellow feeling. An understanding. “I’ve had you, though,” Walter says. “Right from the start.”

He’s expecting some arch posh-boy comment but what he gets is a pause and then: “You’ve not, though,” says Jack quietly and the fact that Walter hasn’t the foggiest what he’s on about must show on his face because Jack continues, “Had me, that is. I rather think I'd have noticed.” 

“‘Had you’?” The harsh, artificial light down here doesn’t half wash folk out but Walter reckons he sees a slight pink tinge on Jack’s cheeks, even from this angle where he’s looking down at his shiny shoes. And comprehension dawns. “Ey up a minute,” he says, accent purposefully broad. “Is that an offer?”

Jack looks up, but his eyes land slightly to the left of Walter’s head. “Do you know, I think it might be.” It’s not a question.

“Christ,” says Walter, hopping down from his desk to stand, awkward, in the middle of the aisle between the desks. “How hard are they working you that you’d be…” He takes a step forward, and Jack, unable to take a step back, pushes up onto his desk. “Look, I know we all miss our homes, Jack, but I’m not your wife.”

That startles a laugh out of him, and the bugger leans back, hands against the wood either side of him. His suits are gorgeous, Walter thinks, only half-concealing his looking. 

“Believe me, Walter,” says Jack. “I hadn’t imagined for a moment that you were.”

Walter thinks he knows where this is going, but for all the reclining he still hadn’t assumed. Bloody hell, he’s thought about it but not that much, nothing except how he’ll find himself getting his wife’s eyes mixed up with Jack’s. 

“You mean…” he says, and takes another step forward. Close enough to touch if he wanted, but not close enough to preclude plausible deniability.

“Yes,” says Jack.

There’s a space between Jack’s parted legs that Walter very well could just step into. “You mean you would…”

Jack throws his hands up. “Oh for heaven’s sake, Walter! It hardly matters. I’m not offering _that_ now, just… Look, Walter, if I don’t get a hand on my prick that isn’t mine I’m afraid I’ll–

Walter steps in, gets a hand around Jack Weatherill’s exquisite fucking tie and pulls their mouths together. It’s just a dry peck, no funny business, but he can feel soft skin and smell cologne, and there’s a hand on his shoulder now. He’s pushed back a little, gently, and so he drops his hands to Jack’s thighs.

“Walter…” Jack begins, and up this close his posh-boy haircut just begs to be messed up a bit.

“I know. Not your wife.” Walter gives the firm thighs under his hands a squeeze. “But not all of us went to your fancy schools, you know. We’re a load of romantics up North. Have to work up to it.”

Jack laughs and looks pointedly down. “The tent in your trousers would rather suggest otherwise.”

His cock had only really woken up when he’d kissed him, Walter doesn’t tell him this for fear of being called a sap. He grins up at Jack and Jack shifts his hips, bringing his arse to the very edge of the desk so that when Walter leans in like so their pricks brush together, hot and rigid through their trousers. 

Walter resolutely doesn’t say anything when he’s pressed close enough to feel the size of Jack’s hard piece against his, the bastard doesn’t need telling, but it makes him hot under the collar with wanting his hands on it. 

“You’re one to talk about tents,” Walter says, grinding his hips forward and grinning when Jack’s mouth falls open.

Jack grabs for his arms, his grip on Walter anchoring him up where he’s precarious. He hisses, low and filthy in that bloody accent, “For fuck’s sake get your hands on me,” and who’s Walter to argue.

He pops open Jack’s button fly before his own, and laughs: Jack’s boxers are only silk as well, a deep rich blue to match the suit while Walter’s just in bog standard striped cotton ones from Marks and Sparks. He feels the soft slide of them when he undoes their buttons, dips his hand in.

With a yelp, Jack squeezes Walter’s biceps so hard he reckons there’ll be bruises, and his hips drive up against Walter’s hand. 

Walter gives Jack’s cock an experimental squeeze and Jack groans, one of his hands dropping from Walter’s arm to brace on the desk again. He frees his own cock from its apparently budget prison and slots it alongside Jack’s, groaning himself at the friction when hot flesh meets.

He reckons it’s a testament to how much Jack’s needed this, his breath hitching with every twitch of either of their cocks and every minute movement of Walter’s hand around them, that no comment is forthcoming when Walter spits in his free hand and swaps. The wetness changes things, makes them glide alongside each other in the slick heat of his palm as he strokes.

“Christ, Jack,” says Walter, and Jack uses the hand still gripping his arm to haul himself up again, the shift in the angle of his cock, making them both make punched out noises as Walter adjusts his grip. 

Walter squeezes near the heads – and, yeah, now Jack’s no longer bloody reclining it’s obvious his prick’s longer, so he’s mostly squeezing the head of Jack’s prick – and Jack digs his teeth into his lower lip before biting out a heartfelt “ _fuck_.” 

He knows the feeling. Walter’s not done this before, any of it. He’s not wanked another man off, he’s not even felt another man’s prick let alone had it sliding against his own as he jacks them both hard and desperate to fucking come. He reckons Jack probably has, though, and in the face of that guesswork, the helpless stuttering of Jack’s hips and, _Christ_ , the look on his sodding face feels like Walter’s winning something. It’s almost sad how proud he is that state school kids can apparently wank just as well as public school boys. 

Jack is looking down between them now, transfixed, and Walter wants to kiss him and so does, leaning forward to steal one as he twists his hand. 

“Come on, Jack,” Walter coaxes, all breathless like a bint in a porno and Jack’s eyes clear a bit as he snatches his fucking handkerchief out of his breast pocket to drop over their pricks before he’s coming with a bitten off shout. Walter’s not long after, both of them soaking the handkerchief and breathing hard through the little jolts that come after.

Jack clears his throat and cleans them up as best he can as briskly as he can while Walter steps back to tuck himself away and watch as Jack does the same, settling his suit back to rights as if nowt had happened.

“Bloody hell,” Walter says, for lack of anything else to say and Jack huffs out a laugh. 

“Quite.” Jack looks around for a bin, apparently deciding that the scrap of white silk is too ruined to even bother washing. Closest one is by the door, though, so he holds it gingerly by the corner and looks at Walter with a familiar smile.

Walter taps the leg of the desk that barely bloody creaked with his foot. “You said ‘now’,” he teases.

Jack hops down from the desk, brushing himself off one-handed and taking up his portfolio. “What was that?”

“You said you weren’t offering that _now_.” Walter grins, smug. “Have you bloody thought about this before?”

He gets an eye-roll. “Walter, come now. Don’t be crass.”

Walter eyes the handkerchief and laughs. “Think it’s a bit late for that, love.”

Jack smiles and goes over to drop the thing in the bin and Walter decides against panicking about cleaning ladies. This place has a bar, this place has a sodding shooting gallery, he doubts a jizz-soaked hankie will even be a novelty. He worries about something else instead.

“Regretting it?” Walter says, tone teasing to hide the worry that’s creeping over him every moment Jack doesn’t turn back to face him.

“No,” says Jack, quick and honest enough to placate Walter. He doesn’t walk back over though, he stays hovering between Walter and the door and says, “Only– we won’t use this against each other, will we?”

_Christ_ , Walter thinks, relieved. “Not a chance. It’s like fucking in wartime, in’t it? Men have needs. Besides, we may not be on the same side but we’re the same, you and I.”

Jack’s face lights up in a grin. “Ha!” He shakes his head, his expression reflecting that fondness Walter feels around him. “What a horrible thing to say, Walter.”

“Yeah, yeah. Honour among deputies, ey?” Walter claps his hands together, the universal ‘well that’s done, then’ sign and saunters past Jack to the door. “Well. Both of us have got places to be…” 

“Yes,” Jack says, opening his portfolio as if he’s got something to check. Another classic move, a ‘busy but good busy,’ and says as if it’s a huge bloody favour: “I’ll give you the head start.” 

“Obliged,” Walter says cheerily. “Oh, and Mr Weatherill? D’you need me a few bob for the handkerchief or does the family give you a free unending supply?”

Jack smiles, eyes crinkling again. “Oh, do sod off, Mr Harrison.”

After having thoroughly enjoyed himself doing so just moments before, Walter sods.

**Author's Note:**

> title from the Magazine song of the same name.


End file.
